This Application is also related to the subject matter of U.S. Pat. No. 4,632,376 issued Dec. 30, 1986 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,674,738 issued June 23, 1987. Related applications have been filed in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and the European Patent Office. The European Application was published June 3, 1987 as No. 224,171A.
All the above applications and patents relate to inventions of the Applicant herein.
The present invention relates to document copying devices and particularly to a sheet-feeding mechanism for advancing, seriatim, the individual sheets from a stack of sheets to be copied.
The stack of sheets is placed on a holder, and the mechanism automatically feeds the bottom-most sheet onto the copier, on demand, as the copier operates.
In the past, sheet-feeding mechanisms have generally been large, bulky, and heavy, supported to one side of the copying surface on or adjacent the frame of the copier, with complicated drive-mechanism to interact between the sheet-feeder and the copier when the sheet-to-be-copied is advanced to the copy position of the copier.
Illustrative of the type of document feeders known in the past is that shown in FIG. 12 herein, as well as in U.S. Pat. No. 4,674,735 issued June 23, 1987. See also British Patent 922,780 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,368,881.